For the Italian nation the World War was the solution of a deep
spiritual crisis. They willed and fought it long before they felt and
evaluated it. But they willed, fought, felt and evaluated it in a
certain spirit which Italy's generals and statesmen exploited, but
which also worked on them, conditioning their policies and their
action. The spirit in question was not altogether clear and
self-consistent. That it lacked unanimity was particularly apparent
just before and again just after the war when feelings were not
subject to war discipline. It was as though the Italian character were
crossed by two different currents which divided it into two
irreconcilable sections. One need think only of the days of Italian
neutrality and of the debates that raged between Interventionists and
Neutralists. The ease with which the most inconsistent ideas were
pressed into service by both parties showed that the issue was not
between two opposing political opinions, two conflicting concepts of
history, but actually between two different temperaments, two
different souls.

For one kind of person the important point was to fight the war,
either on the side of Germany or against Germany: but in either event
to fight the war, without regard to specific advantages--to fight the
war in order that at last the Italian nation, created rather by
favoring conditions than by the will of its people to be a nation,
might receive its test in blood, such a test as only war can bring by
uniting all citizens in a single thought, a single passion, a single
hope, emphasizing to each individual that all have something in
common, something transcending private interests.

This was the very thing that frightened the other kind of person, the